Sunday, October 04, 2009

Prevention of Terrorism

In Belfast Diary: War as a Way of Life, John Conroy examined daily life in West Belfast, Northern Ireland in the early 1980s. One of the facts of life there at the time was the 1974 Prevention of Terrorism Act, a law used by the UK to compile dossiers on individuals, to force people to become informers, and, "to harass activists whose politics the government did not appreciate". In a report by Amnesty International examining the unwarranted detentions, interrogations, and torture of individuals arrested under the act, 88% of those arrested were found to be innocent of any crime whatsoever.